CITY ROOM; Safety Device Was Disabled Before Elevator Death, City Says

By CARA BUCKLEY

Published: February 28, 2012

Maintenance workers failed to enable a door safety circuit on an elevator moments before an advertising executive was killed after stepping into the elevator in an office tower in Midtown Manhattan, according to officials from the city's Department of Buildings and the Department of Investigations.

If the circuit had been working properly, officials said, it would most likely have prevented the elevator from moving abruptly and pinning the executive, Suzanne Hart, inside an elevator shaft. As a result, the Buildings Department is suspending the license of the owner of the maintenance company, Transel Elevator, that performed the work and will seek to have the license revoked.

Transel is owned by John Fichera, and according to its Web site, it services 2,500 elevators in New York City.

Two workers from Transel bypassed the door safety circuit with a jumper wire while performing upgrade work on Dec. 14, on elevator number nine at 285 Madison Avenue, according to the Buildings Department's findings.

Video footage showed the workers leaving the building at 9:55 a.m.
At 9:56 a.m., Ms. Hart, 41, stepped into elevator number nine.

The car lurched upward, its doors still open, pinning half of Ms. Hart's body in the elevator shaft between the first and second floors. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Two other people were trapped in the elevator with her body while rescue workers labored to get them out.

According to officials, the workers did three things wrong. They never re-enabled the safety circuit after performing the upgrade and restoring the elevator to normal service. They did not post a warning that work was being performed, as required under the city's building code. And they did not call the Buildings Department for an inspection, as legally required, before putting the elevator back into service.

''These workers and their supervisors failed to follow the most basic safety procedures, and their carelessness cost a woman her life,'' Robert D. LiMandri, the Buildings Department commissioner, said in a statement. ''New Yorkers who commute to work each day must rely on workers to maintain our buildings in a safe manner at all times, and these employees betrayed that public trust.

The license suspension bans the company from performing elevator upgrades, new installations or inspections, the Buildings Department said.

According to a report by the Department of Investigations, seven employees from Transel were working on the building's elevators on Dec. 14. Two workers, Jason Torzilli and David O'Neill, an apprentice-helper, worked on elevator nine, and after finishing their work left the building, at 9:55 a.m.

A mechanic named Michael Hill installed the ''jumper'' wire after learning that Mr. O'Neill was having trouble reaching the top of the car, according to the Investigations Department, which interviewed the Transel employees, But when asked whether he had accidentally left the jumper wire in place, Mr. Hill told investigators that he had not, according to the Investigations Department.

Mr. O'Neill told investigators that he had no knowledge of the jumper wire being used.

After the accident, the Buildings Department conducted a review of 658 elevators in 169 buildings citywide, of which 370 were maintained by Transel. Of the 135 violations issued, 71 went to Transel, though none of the conditions were related to the oversight that led to Ms. Hart's death, officials said.

As a result of the accident, the Buildings Department issued 23 violations to Transel, which carry a minimum penalty of $117,000, and 11 to Y & R, the advertising company that owns the building.

There are 13 elevators at 285 Madison Avenue, but number nine and a second one have remained out of service since the accident. There are about 60,000 elevators in New York City and there were 43 accidents in 2011.

Ms. Hart was a director of new business at Y&R, part of Young & Rubicam, one of the world's leading advertising agencies. The company had announced earlier that month its plans to relocate to 3 Columbus Circle on the West Side.

In early January, Cushman and Wakefield, which manages the building, replaced Transel with another elevator maintenance firm, PS Marcato. According to a list that has since been removed from Transel's Web site, its clients have included the Graybar Building, the BMW Building, Carnegie Hall, the Hippodrome Building and the Plaza Hotel.

New York City Department of Investigation Report on the Elevator Accident:

New York City Department of Buildings Letter on the Elevator Accident:

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.